The weakest argument of people who defend Katara's treatment in LOK is that she got bloodbending outlawed.
Katara held no political position. She didn't outlaw bloodbending, Sokka and Aang- her brother and husband, who made up 2/5 of the council members- outlawed bloodbending. It might have been her opinion that encouraged them to do so, but it wasn't her that implemented the law.
This is entirely representative of the issue you lot try your best to excuse or ignore. LOK took away Katara's voice, power, and autonomy. She wasn't allowed to hold a position of power or authority. She wasn't allowed to be impactful or recognized at the same level as her friends.
She was only allowed to be a healer. And by only allowing her to be a healer, LOK forces the misogyny that Katara fought against back onto her. And not only on her, on her daughter specifically. Toph and Zuko's daughters are allowed to be fighters and/or leaders. Kya coincidentally "chose" to be a healer. Yet both her brothers are fighters and leaders.
You don't see a problem there?
The thing also about outlawing bloodbending being Katara's greatest accomplishment is:
So you're telling me that her greatest accomplishment is banning the thing that makes her incredibly uniquely powerful, a power specifically created by her people to fight against their oppressors, because it's EEEEEVIL?
It's just awfully interesting, and I'm sure it doesn't at all say anything about how the writers view powerful women.
God I have so many gripes about Katara's treatment in LOK and you're right that it sums up the issue in the writing. It's such a classic example of Bryke not understanding what about the original's most impactful episodes made them so powerful. "The Puppetmaster" is a fucking brutal piece of work and hugely important to Katara's character, but not because she "overcomes the evil scary bloodbending" or whatever they think. We've at that point in the show been told explicitly that Katara has never met a Water Tribe woman who fights before. She is the only one and she had to struggle, steal, beg, and scrap her way to the knowledge that she has with no real role models. And then she finds one. (Sorry this has now become an essay but I apparently could not help myself)
She finds Hama, who knows combat bending, who knows the forms specific to the SWT that Katara had grown up thinking were lost forever. Katara thinks she's stumbled across a once-in-a-lifetime chance to revive a piece of her culture that she thought had been stomped out and lost to her before she'd even been born. It's significant that Hama cooks foods that remind Katara of home because that is what Katara sees in the offer Hama makes to teach her. It's not about power - Katara has plenty of power by that point. Hama offers her a connection to her home and a way to start rebuilding what's been lost to the war.
And then we introduce bloodbending and hear how Hama invented it: as a desperate last resort to save her own life. The Hama of the present has started seeking revenge wherever she thinks she can get it, but we see that she began not dissimilar from Katara: an angry, scared, young woman who wants to protect her home and refuses to accept defeat. Some people read Hama's evolution from the flashback to the time of the episode as if the power of bloodbending corrupted her and while power corrupting people is a theme throughout ATLA, it's misplaced here. I don't think bloodbending is actually any more deadly than other bending forms - you can crush someone's head with a rock or burn them alive pretty quick and easy too. People are just creeped out by it because it makes people feel helpless and violated (see where I'm going here?).
Helpless and violated, kind of like a people that have been systematically weakened and isolated for generations, who are experiencing cultural erosion in addition to physical hardship and grief and the never-ending fear of more raids. Hama's bloodbending makes the pain she's felt for years literal and immediate when she turns it on others. And the lesson for Katara is not "don't be tempted by power" but rather a glaring reminder of something she already knows: the grinding destruction of war warps everything eventually - yes, even this; yes, eventually you. Unless it stops. Unless it is stopped.
